We are also emphasizing particularly that we want to develop this course with the stress on scientific research because very often graduates can't learn how to prepare good essays and research projects just by reading the subject textbooks.
There is a lot of knowledge that a student is expected to somehow 'pick up': what good research looks like; how researchers express themselves; what is a good and bad place to start from. The alert student will gather some of this information piecemeal from tutorials, feedback on written work, talking to other students and so on; but there is usually no way of being sure that you have done all the right things until the work comes back marked.